Scarfolk is a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979. Instead, the entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. Here in Scarfolk, pagan rituals blend seamlessly with science; hauntology is a compulsory subject at school, and everyone must be in bed by 8pm because they are perpetually running a slight fever. "Visit Scarfolk today. Our number one priority is keeping rabies at bay."
For more information please reread.

Wednesday, 25 February 2015

'Bastard Lanes', as they came to be known, were devised for unwed mothers and their unclean offspring. The narrow pedestrian footpaths were identifiable by their double black lines and electrified fences which ran in the gutters of most town streets.

In these two posters, nearly a decade apart, we can see how social policy evolved in Scarfolk. In 1970, the local church authority proposed the lanes as part of its 'campaign for moral decency', but the council banned the campaign, claiming that the church's principles were 'in contravention not only of human rights, but also the rights of foreigners'.

However, it became apparent that the council had only condemned the church as part of a strategy to coax citizens away from traditional religion and toward the state-funded, shadowy cult of Officism (see Discovering Scarfolk).
As the later poster from 1979 shows, despite the council's declared opposition to the church's ethics, the unwed mother lanes were still very much in operation and the alleged injustices of the original religious campaign had simply been rerendered in secular terms.

By the late-1970s, 'Bastard Lanes' had become sites of intense paranormal activity. They were littered with ectoplasm and all over town malevolent pagan spirits wreaked havoc as they brazenly flouted the Green Cross Code.

Thursday, 19 February 2015

In the 1970s, big business concerned itself exclusively with getting
results, irrespective of negative effects on employees. Some Scarfolk
companies were so successful that the state's secret service turned to
them for advice on how to get more productive results when interrogating
dangerous terrorists.

In 1972, under the guidance of
management staff from a Scarfolk pickle factory, imprisoned terrorists
saw their holidays reduced to 25 days per annum, lunch breaks reduced to
30 minutes, and per diem expenses decreased from 5 pounds to 3 pounds.
They had to participate in regular trust and team-building exercises,
such as group games, sing-a-longs, waterboarding, sensory deprivation
and, as the book indicates, mock execution - all the techniques that had
made British business profitable, at home and abroad.

But
when interrogations were further reduced to 3 days per week and some
detainees were even made redundant, many terrorists said enough was
enough and went out on strike. They refused to engage in any
interrogations until a full 5-day week, as well as tea breaks and
afternoon naps were reinstated.

Saturday, 14 February 2015

The romantic bile awareness campaign was launched on Valentine's Day, 1979. It came about following medical research into "that pernicious malady: love", which scientists believed was responsible for the secretion of a mysterious black bile produced in the hearts of the afflicted.

The bile perplexed experts, some of who claimed it to be sentient, though all agreed that it caused irreparable damage to internal organs including the lungs, kidneys and luncheon balls. But it was the brain that was the most susceptible to the bile which could trick the sufferer into demeaning acts such as befriending foreigners and other undesirables.

While the state did turn a blind eye to restrained fondness between its citizens, it could not permit love, requited or otherwise, to go unchecked. As the poster states, all relationships required authorisation from local councils and sexual proficiency was evaluated by a social worker.

In addition to relationship management, Scarfolk council also drew up a definitive list of human traits that it deemed attractive, thus potentially dangerous. Anyone who fulfilled more than three attributes was forced to attend a plastic surgery course during which they were taught self-surgery techniques and given a sterilised Swiss army penknife to ensure compliance with the government's guidelines on physical attraction.

Thursday, 5 February 2015

Unfortunately, there's only scant reference to SCS (Scarfolk Clinical Security) in our archives. All we have is a screenshot from one of their television commercials and a page from a pamphlet given out by family doctors in the mid-1970s.

In 1973, SCS caught the government's interest when it claimed that it could combine and reduce the state's annual budgets allocated to the war on crime, censorship, organ donation and breakfast catering.

As you'll read below, the company proposed that reluctant citizens physically participate in the state surveillance process. Though the scheme was voluntary when it began, it quickly became mandatory.

Click to enlarge

However, in 1976 the scheme suddenly collapsed and SCS went into liquidation. The company had already collected the initial 17,001 eyes that were required to run its living-eye surveillance computer, when it realized that it had neglected to invent an eye-to-computer adapter cable.

The now redundant eyes were returned to their donors with a complimentary display stand (actually, an egg cup with 'thank you' painted on it) and a letter that read: "Be proud that you can look yourself in the eye in the knowledge that your eye was once the nation's eyes and ears".

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